Trees are the lungs to the earth. Protect them.

After a very long morning of being exhausted from the beach party, a 2:00pm ferry ride to the mainland, a night in La Ceiba, and a car ride we have finally made it to our last destination; the small city of Tela. We are staying in this small beach town for the next 3 days and then will be on our way back to the States as of Friday morning. Over the last day and a half with all the transportation and down time I've had some time to think and reflect on our trip thus far. What I have come up with, may seem very simple to you, but is also extremely important to me. With my time here I have fully been made aware that Honduras is an extremely different place than little Poynette, Wisconsin. Yes, I'm sure that you already assumed this. You're probably thinking, well obviously, as Honduras is rated the most dangerous country in the entire world. However, the so called danger rating is not what the focus of this blog post is on.

There are many, many reasons for why this country differs from the United States; both positive and negative. But as I was walking down the street in La Ceiba, on our way to dinner the areas that could use improvement are what really began to stick out to me. Like for instance, there is no recycling, anywhere. This in itself would drive me crazy, as it already has, and I've only been here for 3 weeks. There have been multiple times this trip that both Alisha and I have thought about making extra room in our luggage just to bring back a few empty bottles so they could be recycled. At this point even that would make me feel a little greener. I understand that there are many people in the U.S. who don't recycle either, so if you are one of them, then you should start. You're killing our environment.

On top of no recycling there is garbage everywhere, which gives the city a not-so-pleasant, bad aroma. In the ditches, on the road, in the water, there is trash everywhere. It makes me want to find a trash bag, put on gloves, and start to clean it up. But then you wonder, if I were to do that, where would that bag of trash would go? Back in the streets? In the ocean? The whole situation makes me wish I could do something bigger about it.

Another non-normality is the fact that the power goes out everyday, at least once a day, often times more. Or that you can’t flush toilet paper down the toilet. That I have to buy drinking water because the water here is unsanitary to drink. That I always feel dirty because of the amount of gallons I am sweating daily, on top of the dust that then sticks to my sticky skin. That I was asked if I wanted weed 3 times in a span of a 10 minute walk to dinner in La Ceiba, just because I have dreadlocks. These things don't happen on a regular basis in the U.S. And honestly the list could go on and on.

Besides all of what you may call negatives to traveling to a third world country, there are good things I have encountered here as well. Good things that I feel as though I would never see back home. Like the picture I have posted that goes along with this blog. How many times have you seen a house being built around the tree? I mean the tree was there first, the tree is what keeps us breathing, why would we cut it down? But the fact is that we do. We cut the tree down because it is probably easier than building around it. And that is just one example. There are many more good things that we have been exposed to as well, just read my other blog posts.

So now after reading what seems like a very long list of reasons why never travel to Honduras, along with a small piece of happiness when I mentioned the tree, you may be thinking what's her point. Why is she blogging about why she hates Honduras? However, that could not be further from the truth; I love it here. My point is not to scare you away, but instead to enlighten you on how blessed we are to live where we do. To live in a place where we take the simple things for granted. My point is to inspire you to go and travel to a place where you have to throw your toilet paper in the bin besides the toilet instead of flushing it down the drain. To go outside of your comfort zone in order to learn about other cultures. To go and see how others live so that you can be reminded how blessed we are every single day of our lives to be a citizen of the United States. My point is that there are people in the world everyday praying for what we as "Americans" take for granted. And this simplicity, this is why I love it here. I love it because it reminds me how much God has blessed me. How much He has blessed me with simple things in life, like being able to recycle, or drink water from my faucet. For these simple things I will always be grateful. Until next time....

#honduras